CAPUTO: Tigers better suited to win World Series this year

Detroit Tigers' Torii Hunter, right, celebrates with with Victor Martinez after hitting a walk off three-run home run to beat the Oakland Athletics 7-6 with Victor Martinez in a baseball game in Detroit, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2013. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Evidence was presented Thursday the Tigers are much better suited to win the World Series than last year.

It came in the bottom of the ninth inning.

It wasn’t so much what transpired – the Tigers rallied to beat the Oakland A’s 7-6 - but rather when it happened, and the two players, who played the most significant role in the comeback, that especially stood out in the bigger picture.

The Tigers had lost the previous three games to the A’s, a playoff contender. They were getting crushed for the fourth straight time, raising doubts about whether the Tigers have been built for the postseason.

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They have been. Victor Martinez and Torii Hunter, the epitome of consummate veteran ball players, are on this version of the Tigers. They weren’t last year as the Tigers were unceremoniously swept out of the World Series by the San Francisco Giants. Martinez and Hunter are borderline Hall of Famers. Martinez missed all of last season with a knee injury. He kept the rally alive, fighting off tough pitches from A’s closer Grant Belfour, before dropping a single into center field for an RBI. Then Hunter, who was signed as a free agent, hit a 3-run homer to win the game. The Tigers trailed 6-1 at one point, and 6-3 entering the ninth. Belfour had converted 33-of-34 saves before Thursday.

Seldom has losing a series felt as good. The Tigers came out of the set, the vast majority of which was a stinker, smelling like a rose.

Martinez is a much better, and more consistent performer, than Delmon Young, who he is essentially replacing from last year as the Tigers’ designated hitter.

“He is an outstanding hitter and he is dialed in right now,” Tigers manager Jim Leyland said.

And he showed last week in New York he can still catch adequately.

It would be a gross understatement to suggest Hunter is an upgrade from the 2012 right field playoff platoon of Quintin Berry and Avisial Garcia.

The Tigers are a much better team than last year because of Hunter and Martinez. They only won 88 games last season. They are going to win considerably more this season primarily because of the additions of Martinez and Hunter.

It would be naďve, however, to overlook what went wrong in the Oakland series. In the postseason, if the Tigers starting pitching rotation puts together four underwhelming outings in a row like this week, they won’t win the World Series. The Tigers are an offensive powerhouse, but it is starting pitching, allegedly, which really separates them from the rest of the pack.

And with Justin Verlander struggling, they need Max Scherzer to be an ace. He wasn’t Thursday.

Oakland’s hitters are much more patience than the disaster lineups the Tigers had been mostly facing before this series. They don’t just get themselves out.

Everybody was bemoaning Verlander’s outing Tuesday, but it was the best of the week so far by a Tigers’ starter.

Scherzer has been brilliant this season, but much has been made about him getting seven runs per game in support from Detroit’s hitters. Many of his 19 wins have been lopsided decisions. His previous seven winning decisions came following a Tigers’ win. In a sense, his status as an “ace” was put to the test Thursday. He didn’t pass.

The day after a night in which the Tigers’ staff was touched for 21 hits, Scherzer wasn’t able to stop the bleeding. Five earned runs in five innings, including two home runs, didn’t provide the Tigers with what they needed. The Tigers won despite Scherzer Thursday, not because of him.

It doesn’t mean Scherzer is overrated, but it doesn’t mean he is underrated, either. He did, likely, place doubt in the minds of those, who are on the fence about voting for him for the AL Cy Young Award.

It was the opposite of the premium that was put on Verlander’s clutch performances in 2011, when he was named the AL MVP in addition to Cy Young winner, at least in some degree, because he turned in one sterling pitching performance after another to stop Detroit losing streaks.

But most concern about the Tigers is splitting hairs – until the postseason.

Usually it’s sacrilegious to suggest a team can’t collapse, but it does seem very unlikely the Tigers won’t get into the tournament. Once there, they have more depth and better balance to their lineup because of Hunter and Martinez, the latter, who has bounced back remarkably from a painfully slow start this season.

Yeah. There are a million and one things that can go wrong for the Tigers.

But odds are a lot better that won’t happen this year because of Hunter and Martinez.

Pat Caputo is a senior sports reporter and a columnist for Digital First Media. Contact him at pat.caputo@oakpress.com and read his blog at theoaklandpress.com. You can follow him on Twitter @patcaputo98